Editorial: Time for feds to update school lunch nutrition guidelines

Associated Press / File photoSchoolchildren would have to pick up more whole grains, fruits and vegetables on the lunch line under proposed new federal standards for school lunches. The Agriculture Department proposal applies to lunches subsidized by the federal government and would be the first major nutritional overhaul of school meals in 15 years. (AP Photo/Jim Mone, File)

When the federal government last updated its school lunch nutrition guidelines, today’s high school sophomores had not yet been born.

In other words, it’s high time that the guidelines are brought up to date, reflecting what’s been learned since 1995, when the focus was mainly on the fat content in foods served in school cafeterias. With so many kids still so out of shape, the nation would do well to attack the problem head on.

Agriculture Department Secretary Tom Vilsack has proposed an update of the guidelines. The department would publish the new rules later this year. In announcing the change recently, Vilsack ticked off a list that no one could reasonably argue with. More whole grains. More fruits and vegetables. Less starch. Less salt. Fewer overall calories.

While we don’t all of us follow these most-sensible rules in the day to day, at least not at every meal, we are making decisions, as adults, when we deviate from the straight and narrow. Not so for children in school. They are getting the lunches that are prepared for them. This is why new, up-to-date guidelines are necessary.

Anyone who might think otherwise need only look at the statistics cited by Vilsack: Nearly a third of today’s school-age children are either obese or are at risk of becoming obese. “If we do not get our hands around the obesity epidemic in the United States by the year 2018,” the secretary said, “we will face nearly $344 billion of additional health-care costs.”

He also noted, chillingly, that there are real implications for national security. According to one bipartisan study, some 9 million young adults from 17 to 24 are unfit for military service because they are simply not in good enough shape. We are what we eat. Our nation’s schoolchildren have got to start eating better in order to get better.